WRITING TO RIGHT A HEART THAT'S BEEN WRONGED

Guess what? I'm taking my heartbreak show on the road. Well, maybe not literally, or on the actual road, but after sloughing away here in obscurity for the last six months, I've decided that it's time to bare my soul for the benefit of a wider audience and possibly even do some good in the process. Actually, the idea of publishing an e-book based on my experiences as "the other woman" in a relationship with a married man was first broached to me by a friend a few months back, but I dismissed it, telling her that I was only writing this blog because I needed an outlet for my pain, not because I thought that I had anything especially unique to say about a situation in which countless women have found themselves and will continue to find themselves as long as there are unhappily married men willing to lie to get what they want from women willing to believe their lies in exchange for promises that are just more lies in a primordial state. My friend told me that I was missing the point. It was because my situation was not unique, and so many other women were going through the same grieving process after being discarded by a married man that made my story worth telling, not just in the form of a blog with a limited readership, but in a more visible form...such as an e-book. So I thought about it. I've been thinking about it for a while now. And it's finally time to stop thinking about it and embark on the actual process of doing it. And so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I realize that publishing an ebook about my experience as "the other woman" isn't likely to trigger a worldwide moratorium on the ages old dynamic between philandering husbands and the women who aid and abet them under the deluded notion that a man's lust and desire for sex are the same things as a woman's love. But as I so often feel compelled to remind those close to me, I'm a writer, and writers write, not just because they want to tell colorful stories, or impress readers with their literary technique, or spend beautiful summer afternoons in a hot room typing their fingers raw while all the other sane people they know are frolicking on the beach, but because writing is sometimes the only thing standing between them and the black abyss threatening to devour them whole. It's the means by which they expunge their pain, the process through which they hope to find salvation by revisiting their own sins and making peace with the sins that have been committed against them. And sometimes, while immersed in that process, they become the unwitting conduit for a wisdom greater than their own, one that they may not recognize at the time, but which will resonate for someone who reads their words later on. So, even though an ebook about the mistake I made in loving a married man may not be enough to keep most similarly-inclined women from following the same dangerous course, it just might help to keep the population of Hotel Heartbreak down by a guest or two.

As far as this blog is concerned, I'll still be posting updates here from time to time, but I'll be focusing most of my attention on getting the ebook ready for publication. I have no idea what to expect after that. No idea where this road will lead me, or whether it will lead me anywhere at all. If nothing else, the publication this ebook will at least serve as proof that what some people see as "obsession", other, more perceptive people recognize as "courage", which is what it takes to look back at the painful place you've just been so that you can free yourself from the pain and begin to move forward once again. In some of my earlier posts, I made a point of saying that I felt no remorse for having been involved with a married man, only resentment that he had duped me into believing that I was in love with a man who loved me, too. My stance regarding the subject hasn't changed. My only crime was allowing myself to believe that a man who readily admitted to having had five previous extra-marital affairs before he met me was telling the truth when he told me that I was "the one." The only regret I have is that I was too inexperienced in the role of mistress to read between the lines when he told me very early in our relationship that he thought his wife might be having an affair with her doctor and that he wished she would leave him. Everything he was, everything that he would eventually reveal himself to be...passive, indecisive, weak, and unworthy of my love...was in those words.

A man who says that he's not happy with his wife, and wishes she would leave him is a man who has no intention of ever leaving his wife, and the reason he's being so nice to you and making you feel so special is that you're the slice of cherry pie that balances out the steamed broccoli he gets at home. And no matter how delicious your cherries might be, when the time comes for him to make a choice between dinner and dessert, you'll be the one who ends up on the compost heap. It's all so clear to me now. But I would never have believed it back then. Every woman in love with a married man is convinced that her relationship is that rare gem that defies the odds, that he is the man who will leave his wife, and she is the other woman who won't get hurt in the end. I know this because I was convinced of those very same things. And that's why I'm publishing this ebook. Because I lived the cliche and want to spare other women from living it, too. And that's why I'm calling my book "He Doesn't Really Love You, He's Not Going To Leave His Wife, And You're A Fool For Wasting Your Time (...Are Just Three Of The Reasons You Should Never Get Involved With A Married Man). What do you think? Feel free to let me know.